25 March 2018

Jesus is Temple

On the Palm Sunday when the Lord came to His Temple and 'cleansed' it, it seems to me, as I argued yesterday, that our essential Jewishness is something which we must constantly bear in mind. And this was emphasised most brilliantly in the first published volume of Jesus of Nazareth by our Holy Father Benedict XVI. If, after your initial enthusiastic perusal of its pages, it has during the wearisome preoccupations of this lesser pontificate been rather gathering dust on your shelves, I beseech you to get it up and running again. I would urge you to turn to the very fine section where Joseph Ratzinger deals with the Sermon on the Mount; and does so by engaging with one of the most distinguished historians of Jewish thought in recent decades, Rabbi Professor Dr Jacob Neusner, whom I featured yesterday.

In Northern Ireland they are convinced, not only that the dogs in the streets are either Catholic or Protestant dogs, but that the very atheists are either Catholic of Protestant atheists. People sometimes laugh about this, but our Ulster friends mean, of course, very intelligently, that a man may claim to be an atheist, but that his mindset, the matrix especially of of his antipathies, may have been formed by a cultural background which is differently doctrinaire from his current position of dogmatic atheism. English atheists, for example, often have minds befuddled by a world view which is little other than the old, ranting, Fox's-Martyrs-in-a-sauce-of-Charles-Kingsley-with-a-dash-of-Kensit Protestantism, all in the reassuring clothing of a friendly atheistical sheep.

Jewish scholars who venture into 'Christian Origins' tend very often, I fear, to be Liberal Protestants in sheep's clothing. That is what made Neusner so exhilarating to read. He did not have that sort of crypto-Protestant bagage.

The old Liberal Protestant superstition, such a comfort to the anti-Catholic mind, was that the Eucharist started as a simple fellowship meal which, probably under the influence of Hellenistic Mystery cults, was perverted into the Catholic Mass. Neusner, on the other hand, was free to follow the obvious track which leads from the 'Cleansing of the Temple' (in which Christ emptied the Temple of those who, by changing money or supplying certified animals, enabled the Temple cult to be fulfilled) to the conclusion, documented from his profound knowledge of first century Judaism, that Jesus of Nazareth saw himself as abolishing that sacrificial cult on the Temple Mount because of His intention, on Maundy Thursday, to erect in its place the new sacrificial system of His Eucharistic self-oblation in His Body and Blood.

And, during this Holy Week, let us continually bring back to our memories the self-identification the Lord made of himself with the Temple. "Destroy this Temple, and in three days ...". But he had made this identification during his Galilaean ministry. He forgave sins! Who indeed, as the watchers absolutely correctly asked themselves, can forgive sins but God alone? And where does God do so, if not in the Place of Sacrifice, the Temple?

9 comments:

I shall always remember the shock caused by that great Jesuit, Fr Meredith, when he preached in Wycliffe chapel [known in those innocent days of the 80s as “Wycers for Vicars in Knickers”] on Candlemas, when he explained carefully to the assembled Lollards that the Latin heading for the Scripture that day was: “In Templo Templum”. In the Temple is the Temple. The baby Jesus . He knocked them out! From that day I knew my fate was sealed.

I love Benedict’s truly open mutual engagement with Rabbi Neusner. Two profound thinking believers who can penetrate to truth, because aided by the gift of charity their minds and hearts can pursue truth to the very root.

For those without a copy of Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth to hand, I have just come across an excellent summary of his thinking on the liturgy with an emphasis on Temple and sacrifice, at this link:http://www.hprweb.com/2018/03/heaven-on-earth/

How one misses him!

You remind me of a friend who was an agnostic, but not hostile to faith; indeed, he took the Augustine special subject then on offer in the Oxford history school. He became a civil servant in the Northern Ireland office and remarked that nothing had prepared him for Ulster Protestantism. The God he couldn't really believe in was, he reflected, the God of the decent high-and-dry Anglicanism of his family, and what he found in Ulster was something else again.

Fr John Hunwicke

was for nearly three decades at Lancing College; where he taught Latin and Greek language and literature, was Head of Theology, and Assistant Chaplain. He has served three curacies, been a Parish Priest, and Senior Research Fellow at Pusey House in Oxford. Since 2011, he has been in full communion with the See of S Peter. The opinions expressed on this Blog are not asserted as being those of the Magisterium of the Church, but as the writer's opinions as a private individual. Nevertheless, the writer strives, hopes, and prays that the views he expresses are conformable with and supportive of the Magisterium. In this blog, the letters PF stand for Pope Francis. On this blog, 'Argumentum ad hominem' refers solely to the Lockean definition, Pressing a man with the consequences of his own concessions'.